DAI’s IQC TAMIS is a vehicle developed specifically for managing USAID’s indefinite quantity contracts (IQCs). The management needs of an IQC are often substantial.

They involve multiple activities, in multiple countries, with multiple partners, and each activity has its own personnel, its own set of contract deliverables, and its own set of demands. Additionally, the consortiums that are awarded IQCs are often large because of the breadth of activity involved. USAID uses the IQC vehicle to tap this breadth and depth of expertise in a way that is efficient and cost-effective. The IQC TAMIS has given DAI an effective tool for meeting these unique needs.

DAI uses the IQC TAMIS to promote collaboration and coordination among our consortium partners and USAID by allowing them to access the TAMIS through the DAI Web site. Using a password, our partners can collaborate with us in tracking and developing potential task orders, defining scopes of work, selecting appropriate candidates, and managing and monitoring our task orders during implementation.

Specifically, TAMIS serves three key functions. It is a vehicle through which to:

• Develop task order opportunities;
• Manage and monitor task order activities; and
• Monitor the IQC’s performance.

Task Order Development
With the large number of task orders that could be funded in a multi-year IQC, it is necessary to have a rational means of organizing ideas as they come in.

Email can be used to distribute ideas widely, but can do little to help the team sift through and organize ideas as they are presented and developed. TAMIS, in contrast, provides a workspace for task orders to be organized and developed collaboratively. For example, when any member of the IQC team of collaborators learns of a potential task order opportunity, information is entered into the TAMIS and made available to all partners. Anyone can comment on the opportunity, elaborating on the technical issues involved, sharing relevant experience and lessons learned, and identifying resources that might be tapped. This process continues when an RFP is received. The technical response to an RFP can be developed directly within TAMIS, giving all team members a vehicle in which to provide suggestions. Interested team members enter into TAMIS the resumes of potential candidates, thus promoting a transparent process of candidate selection. TAMIS can also capture budgets, allowing team members to collaborate on the most cost-effective ways to implement a task order.

Task Order Management and Monitoring
Implementing a large number of task orders requires a vehicle to efficiently manage the volume of routine management tasks that are required. Administrative and management functions handled by TAMIS include mobilizing short- and long-term technical assistance, donor and host country approvals, travel authorizations, level-of-effort tracking, and procurement. TAMIS stores all relevant documents with the task order and allows all partners, including the Contract Officer's Technical Representative (COTR) at USAID, to review documents in real time. As tasks are completed and outputs achieved, the results and accomplishments are automatically translated into monitoring and information progress reports. TAMIS ensures that all participants are continually up to date so that the need for lengthy progress reports is minimized.

IQC Performance Monitoring
With TAMIS, monitoring progress on individual task orders is easy, but the system is also designed to aggregate task order results to provide information on the overall performance of an IQC. At any time during IQC implementation, there could be a number of task orders in the pipeline at various stages in the process. The IQC TAMIS was built specifically to give the project director a tool with which to simultaneously initiate and manage this volume of complex activities. The ability to access this system on the Internet also gives USAID a vehicle with which to participate in a dialogue with the full team and a way in which to monitor progress across individual task orders.

ICRP IQC TAMIS on the WEB